The Horse Chronicles
A journal from Pennsylvania
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Psycho-killer Ponies

Sandy Zeiler took her crazy, mean Thoroughbred mare Kelly with her to Virginia, and Katie and I said "good riddance!" If there was ever a case for the knacker's wagon, it was Kelly.

Sandy left Mr. Beau to keep Tez company for the winter. Mr. Beau, a/k/a Bo-Bo, a/k/a Moose Lips. This horse has such a personality! Not necessarily a good personality, but definitely a large one.

Bo is 25 years old, half-thoroughbred, half-Trakehner (German warm-blood jumping horse). He is a retired hunter-jumper. He is yellow with black mane and tail and is very sway-backed. He's also a very large horse.

Now, Bo is a real study in the horse. A few years ago, Bo cast himself in his stall, and during his struggle he whacked his head and fractured his skull, an injury he should have died from - complete with ataxia, partial paralysis, and eventual chronic neurologic disorder in his hind end. Bo recovered, no doubt to his being endowed with an unusually high level of "just-plain horneriness." Quitter, he ain't.

Don't ever try to put a halter on Bo in the pasture. He'll try to kill you. And he means it. Put a halter on him in his stall, in the barn, fine. No problem. If you try to approach him in the pasture, Bo will first ascertain what it is you want from him. He does this by reading your mind. If you mean to make him do anything resembling work, he will charge you with his ears flat against his skull, lips peeled back to maim you with his teeth, and front hooves in the air to stomp you. A veritable whirling dervish at a dead run in your direction - and he has a forty-foot stride at the gallop. You are safer locked in a cage with a wounded she-grizzly bear.

But, go out to the pasture with a carrot or a flake of hay and nothing but Christian kindness in your soul, and Bo is as gentle as a warm puppy.

Fortunately, Bo can't kick. He tries to kick. He puts tremendous effort and concentration into kicking - for a solid thirty seconds he thinks real hard about kicking, then his ass-end goes up six inches off the ground.

The other night, for instance, Joe and I went out to the barn to bed-down Bo and Tez. It was not particularly cold, but the boys were wet from the rain and needed to be toweled down a bit. No problem with Tez - he enjoys the attention. But for Bo, this requires putting on a halter and a lead rope, getting his attention with a stern word ("Stand still, dammit!"). It's a two-man job.

But, the two men in the barn were busy doing six different things, so Joe decided he would towel Bo down by himself. Without the halter. Bo ran Joseph out of his stall pretty damn quick. Not so, Susie, who is much, much smarter than both Bo and Joe put together.

I walked into Bo's stall with the towel. He put his ears back and informed me that no, he would not stand for being toweled off. I explained to him that one of us was going to concede this little argument, and it would not be me - and no, I was not going to put his halter and lead rope on first!

I walked up to Bo at the point of his on-side (left) shoulder, towel down out of sight. He put his ears back and postured to bite. When I did not immediately run away from him, he swung his rump at me to try and kick. I rotated with his front end, trying to keep from getting pinned against a stall wall.

After a few seconds, Bo realized that I was not kidding, and that I was not leaving until I dried him off. I folded the towel and placed it against his shoulder. The aggressive body language started all over again, both of us ducking and weaving around his stall. Finally, after about six fits and starts, old Bo stopped in his tracks, put his ears forward and gave me his largest and best "Moose-Lips" smile! "I didn't really mean it, you know that! So, go ahead and dry me off now."

I did. I worked my way all around his big, lanky, cranky cantankerous body, even standing right behind his bum to wipe his tail down. Bo reminds me of a composite middle-aged Vaudeville comedian, sort of a combination of the innocence and wit of Red Skelton, the caustic meanness of Don Rickles, and the obnoxious, snotty whining of Rodney Dangerfield. But he is a wonderful riding horse, can still sail over a three-foot rail, and he's just great company in the barn. Loves to stand and watch in wonder at the UFO's from the barn door (airplane lights coming in for night landings at the airport).

I am probably the best friend Bo has, besides Sandy, and I know that he really loves me dearly. He is simply a cranky, crotchety old fart, like a retired railroad pensioner who thinks the world owes him a favor. A real meat & potatoes kinda guy. Fits right into our barn, for sure!

Bo will not stand still for very long when you groom him. I like to wash his feet and ankles down and to treat his hooves with conditioner, and I generally ask for Joe's help holding Bo while I work. We have found that if we rig a hay net for Bo, he will munch quietly for up to 30 minutes for a good grooming session. And then again, sometimes he won't.

One morning recently, I decided that Tez and Bo needed their pedicures. I did Tez first and put him up in his stall so Bo would have company near by. But on this morning, it wasn't convenient for Bo to have a foot appointment, and it was quite a struggle for Joe to hang on to him while I tried to tend his feet. Finally, just as I had dabbed on the last of Bo's foot gunk, the horse declared that he had had enough fussing. He began to paw impatiently with his forefoot and insist on being let go. Bo stuck his right foreleg high enough up in the air to plant it right in the middle of the nylon hay net tethered to the stall gate. A blivet in the making.

It is a horse's normal instinct to panic when their limbs are caught in anything, and there is nothing more dangerous than a panic stricken horse in an enclosed area. Joe and I were both on the wrong side of the horse, but before I could say "Oh, Jesus Christ!", Joe reached across Bo's chest, under his neck, and lifted up the horse's entire right front leg, bent the knee and pulled it out of the hay net. He did this in the blink of an eye before either Bo or I had the chance to panic. I do not know what I would do without my quick-thinking partner. We no longer rig a net for grooming sessions. We put the hay in a nice safe bucket. 

On "Blivets" and Darwin's Theories of Evolution As They May Apply To Human Learning

Blivets are universal occurrences, generally caused by any combination of the application of Murphy's Laws and human stupidity. According to Joseph, the definition of a blivet is "ten pounds of shit in a five pound sack." Sometimes the wisdom and experience we gain from working with horses is purchased at a premium in the form of blivets. Seemingly routine situations can produce unexpected results. Now, my morning feed routine is set, right? I could do it in my sleep. In fact, I regularly do it in my sleep since I feed at 6:00 each morning.

A few days ago, after feeding the guys, I went to let Tez out of his stall. This means I have to pick up Bo's feed dish first, or Tez hogs it. (He gobbles up any leftover feed, and if it's empty, he stands over it and licks it like a dog. I don't know why - they both get the same stuff every day.)

Normally, Tez waits politely for me to walk through the door first. But on this one morning, he must have been impatient to leave. As I started through the narrow stall door, he tried to come through it with me. Now, I was wearing my thick down barn jacket, which was very fortunate.

Tez, with his thousand pound body, trapped me against the upright beam which frames the door way. Instantly, I was stuck between the horse's rib cage and a solid wood beam. Worse, my left wrist was trapped against my rib cage. Not flat, but at a 90 degree angle to the beam. I was completely immobilized.

Tez was squeezing my ribs so hard, I couldn't get a breath to yell at him, and both my arms were trapped at my side. I had many long seconds (three or four) to think about the situation and what I thought was this: left wrist compression fracture, broken ribs, crushed liver and spleen, ruptured intestines. I can't yell at him and I don't want to because it might panic him into moving even farther forward which will be even worse.

Then, Tez stopped in his tracks. He was likewise trapped. He turned his head to look at me as if to say "What are you doing there? You're preventing me from going through this door." So, he just backed-up. No big deal. Here, Mom, you can go through first.

I was so grateful to this big dumb ox for thinking things through calmly instead of panicking as any normal horse would have done, that I couldn't even scold him. Also, my left arm hurt so badly, I didn't have wits left to get mad. After I got my breath back and determined that nothing was broken, I did go over and thank him, though. And yes, he was in Bo's stall licking and licking Bo's dish. He ignores me when I do stupid things.

But now we have a little talk every morning before I open his stall door to let him out. I make sure we have solid eye contact, and he is standing still, and he is paying attention to me. I tell Tez "Back up!" and make him take two steps backward. I tell him to Stand and Stay. Which he does. Now, I am always clear of that damn door before Tez even gets close to it. I want to put a sign in my barn with the pun "Blivets Happen."

We've Eliminated The Cavalry Charge From Your Repertoire:
A Detailed Retrospective Of A Blivet

When I first went to Empress Arabians to see about purchasing a horse, what I had in mind was a schooled, experienced 10 year old something-or-other; a dependable, ridable pet; a safe bore. What I came home with, or rather who, was a green-broke, four-year old with insatiable curiosity and apparently bottomless capabilities. For trouble.

My Tez. What a learning experience he has proved to be. He's now seven years old, and he has settled down some, but not much. What we gain in experience riding together during the Spring, Summer, and Fall, we lose over the winter furlough.

So, every February when our winter weather begins to lift, Tez and I start training again. Twice daily for two weeks straight, weather permitting; twenty minutes per session. Walk, trot, halt, backup, walk, trot; finally, when I feel like he's safe and under control, we practice a slow canter (not an easy concept for this youngster to master) across a large circle. Then we are able to take on progressively longer workouts and trail rides together. I have to put him back on his manners so that we can take on the longer conditioning work outs.

Two years ago, after I though I had Tez schooled-up, we had our first and only accident in which I fell. Now, we don't do anything which could cause Mom to fall off because she doesn't like that!

One very wet February afternoon, Tez and I had put on a couple of miles going around the pasture - a thirty minute warm-up for him before the real work starts. Going up the far fence line, by John's cows, I let him into a canter and he accelerated to a hand gallop and then up to a full blown run. He lives to run. It gives him great joy, and he just has a roaring good time!

I really thought we had done our homework for this workout. However, as we came to the crest of the hill, near the grove of locust trees where the boogers live, he spotted a twig or a branch or something out of place on the ground. Then time slowed down to the stretched-out milliseconds that inevitably precede my most disastrous blivets.

We were slowing down at the top of the hill, but we were still going way too fast. I saw him look at the branch on the ground, and I know it was 30 or 40 feet away and he probably couldn't see it clearly.

Tez hit the brakes hard and tried to veer to the left, leaving my body weight too far forward to correct in time. As he stopped, he literally stepped out from under me. Later, I checked his skid marks. He went from about 15 miles per hour to zero in the space of one meter or less. I didn't.

In a riding accident, when you are unseated, you fight like hell to stay in the saddle. But, if you hit the point of no return, you have
to make decisions about breaking your fall, and the best way to land. I made all the wrong decisions.

For example, when I saw him begin to react to the "snake stick," I now recall the way he stiffened before he slammed on the brakes. At that point, I probably had at least one second to bury my hands in his mane (instead of hanging on to his mouth with the reins), and to grab the saddle horn. That would have broken my fall, and may have kept me in the saddle - or at least near it.

As it was, I held on to the reins only. When he simultaneously skidded and stepped left, my weight stayed where it was. I found myself suspended in mid-air. My left foot came up out of the stirrup, though my right foot stayed on the right stirrup. My right hand pulled hard on the right rein which turned his head and body to the right, again, pulling him farther away from me. At this second, I had no choice but to pull my right foot out of the stirrup.

I must have pinwheeled through the air before I landed. The fat muscle of my right shoulder took the entire fall. The ground was soft and saturated from recent rains, and I landed on a soft, grassy spot. I remember feeling the ground beneath me yield to the impact of my body. I rolled and bounced once flat on my back, and all the air went out of my lungs at the same time.

I knew the instant I touched down that I wasn't seriously hurt, and that if I could just get some air into my lungs, I'd be fine. But boy, was I mad. I lay on the ground and looked up at the sky for a few minutes to clear my head and catch my breath. I sat up, counted fingers and toes, and then went to look for my horse.

Poor little guy. He was really upset. Tez had trotted about 50 feet away toward the pasture fence and was standing there shaking and blowing. He was very surprised to see me on the ground. I guess he didn't know that could happen to us. I think he also anticipated a beating, or at least some serious yelling from me. But, he didnt' get it. I knew that it was my fault for riding out of control.

So, I got right back on, and we walked the mile around the pasture to cool him out a little and get him calmed down again. We walked up to the "snake stick" so he could get a good look and smell of it. Then, we did another mile at the walk trot. This time, I pointed him exactly as he had been when I fell. Once again, he reacted the "snake stick." This time I laid into him verbally and forbade him to react to it. Over and over again. Until he understood.

Oh, there are more blivets to tell about. And probably a few more blivets yet to come, hopefully not bad or sad catastrophe's. Learning the curve is necessary, even if it means taking a few lumps in the process. We all really do try not to be careless or forgetful around the horses.

This weekend, Katie is away at a horse show in Chagrin Falls, Ohio, with her new employers at Bar Gee Farms. A good outfit, great hunter-jumpers, nice facilities, and kind owners. An improvement, we think, from her disastrous and brief internship under David Flynn at State College.

There is a book in my barn. Waiting to be written. A silent sonnet with leave to speak to the calming delights of warm sunlight filtering through hay dust, and the smell of the horses skin and hair and sweat; the pain in my lower back from hauling hay and tending hooves; the aches in my knees and ankles and muscles from just one more hour in the saddle; the shuffle of Wally O'Bird's feathers up in the loft - a pigeon who has adopted the horses as a means to his daily ration of spilled oats on the floor; the wild kestrel who needs to sleep inside the barn with Wally, but only on the coldest, meanest nights; visits to the loft by tubby-tabby Thomas the cat who manages our varmint inventory; raids in the dark of night by the raccoons who like to come in and party in the sweet-feed bins …and, the pain of occasionally losing a friend.